The UK has advanced its £10bn competition for an aircrew training partner, but can its ambitions be satisfied?
A UK contest to select an industry supplier of military aircrew training services has started to heat up, with the delivery last week of tender responses and conceptual system design reviews from the three consortia fighting to secure the estimated £10 billion ($17.9 billion) deal. Several months of detailed analysis and negotiations now stand between the Defence Procurement Agency’s (DPA) integrated project team and the confirmation of a “training system partner” to deliver the tri-service UK Military Flying Training System (MFTS) from April 2007.
Delivered to the DPA’s Abbey Wood site in Bristol on 23 August, the many reams of documents prepared by the rival bidders outline their proposed approaches to meeting UK requirements across 19 aviation disciplines, including fast jet, rotary and multi-engine pilot training and instruction for rear crew and weapon system operators up to the operational conversion unit level. An industry insider describes the Ministry of Defence’s March 2005 invitation to negotiate as an “exam question”, adding: “The bid submission seeks a partner, not a solution.” However, accompanying conceptual design study work includes many thousands of pages of detailed data concerning system aspects such as training pipelines, syllabi and system management tools.
Intriguingly, the process to date has made sure that the consortia steer clear of identifying individual aircraft types to meet the broad-ranging MFTS requirement, with bidders instead directed to focus on generic categories, such as basic jet and high- or low-end turboprop solutions. Such decisions will be made by a joint MoD and industry team following the announcement of a preferred bidder next July or August, and will reflect the planned incremental nature of the 25-year MFTS contract. This calls for a partnering contract to be in place by January 2007 and for full service provision to be achieved by April 2012.
With the UK keeping faith with a planned mix of private finance initiative (PFI) agreements and direct procurements to deliver MFTS services, how realistic is the MoD’s extremely demanding timetable for service provision? The UK’s previous highest profile PFI deal – for its Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) – has failed to keep its schedule, with the EADS-led AirTanker consortium still in the process of securing the £2.5 billion in private sector financial support it requires to bankroll the £13 billion deal. But MFTS consortium sources say the training programme should avoid the perils of the tanker deal as it does not mirror FSTA’s “big-bang” model, which relies on a single contract to cover 27 years of operation.
The three teams contesting the MFTS requirement are Ascent, a 50:50 joint venture between Lockheed Martin and VT Group; 100% Thales-owned Sterling, which also involves Boeing at the partner level; and Vector Flying Training Services, which comprises Bombardier, KBR and Lear Siegler Services with respective stakes of 20%, 40% and 40% each, supported by FlightSafety Services and Northrop Grumman. The teams will make formal presentations to the MoD on their bids from 31 August to 2 September.
With none of the bidders yet linked to specific aircraft, the recommendation of trainers is expected to be one of the most fiercely contested elements of the programme. The consortia have been in discussion with manufacturers for around two years and fixed-wing platforms under consideration include Aermacchi’s M311 and M346, the Pilatus PC-21 and Raytheon’s T-6 Texan II. BAE Systems is the only certain winner, with the company expecting a production order late this year for up to 44 Hawk 128 advanced jet trainers (AJT) to enter service from August 2008. BAE’s production and possible support of the Hawk 128 fleet is expected to add a further £3 billion to the value of the MFTS deal.
While the AJT is the highest profile of the MFTS procurements, numerous other aircraft and synthetic training systems will be required to train up to a current total of 1,500 students a year, only a fraction of which will go on to fly the Hawk. The MoD’s selected partner must manage and maintain these diverse assets and will be responsible for facilities management. Given the large scale of required contractor investment, current plans for MFTS are believed to outline a minimum 15-year agreement with two five-year options, although this could be extended to a 20-year package with one five-year extension.
There is a lot riding on the successful delivery of the MFTS infrastructure, as the contract represents one of the MoD’s 10 so-called “change programmes” intended to further improve its procurement practices. The programme’s transition period will prove the most complex and highest-risk phase of the project, with the industry partner and MoD to review all current training packages, the last of which will expire in 2012.
Synthetic training will play an increasingly vital role in the UK’s training system, with the comparative ease of flying new-generation strike aircraft like the Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter expected to place ever greater emphasis on systems management. The successful contractor may have to tackle the instruction of operators for future unmanned systems, although this aspect is not being investigated in the current bid phase.
It remains to be seen how much potential exists for the UK to offer other users spare capacity on its future MFTS infrastructure, or for its selected partner to export a similar model to other nations. Current UK systems such as FBH-run Defence Helicopter Flying School and BAE’s Hawk Synthetic Training system now provide services to friendly nations, and there could be similar potential to market aircrew training services to countries like Singapore and Turkey and potentially to disaffected Eurotraining nations. “A lot of people are looking at what’s happening with MFTS”, says an industry source.
Source: Flight International
